Washington Work and Family Coalition

Spokane City Council holds firm on commitment to paid sick days

Photo: James Hawley/Flickr Creative Commons [Original: https://flic.kr/p/6oegMc]

Spokane’s City Council held firm on their commitment to assuring that people working in the city will be able to earn paid sick and safe leave starting next January. Mayor Condon vetoed the law that passed January 11 with a 6 to 1 vote, saying he hoped the Council would reconsider. But the Council acted to override that veto at their next meeting, January 25, 2016.

Over the past two years, hundreds of workers, business owners, and community leaders turned out to talk about what a paid sick days ordinance would mean to them. The overwhelming majority of them favored passing an ordinance to protect public health, allow survivors of domestic violence to seek safety, and boost family economic security.

Without sick leave standards in place, four in ten workers don’t get a single day of paid sick leave, and many more face penalties at work when they do call in sick. Spokane’s new law will allow people to stay home from work when sick without losing income. Sick children won’t be left miserable at school or home alone because a parent can’t take off work. And as Carol Krawczyk of the Spokane Alliance and I said in our Spokane Spokesman-Review op-ed:

Customers of Spokane businesses will be able to rest a little easier next year when the law takes effect, knowing the person serving their salad, caring for a loved one in a nursing home or handling their store purchase isn’t being forced by family finances or employer policy to come in sick.

Spokane is the third city in Washington state to pass paid sick leave. Next November, voters statewide will likely have the chance to weigh in on a ballot measure providing a minimum standard for paid sick leave for workers across the state, along with an increase in the minimum wage.

Marilyn Watkins is policy director for the Economic Opportunity Institute, which spearheads the Washington Work and Family Coalition.

Sick and safe leave right for Spokane

[via The Spokesman-Review] No one should be forced to go to work sick. No child should languish ill and miserable at school because her parent fears a missed shift will result in a lost job. No worker should have to choose between grocery money or taking a few days off to get well.

That is what thousands of citizens told the Spokane Alliance in its two-year campaign to bring earned sick and safe leave to more than 40,000 low-income workers who toil in Spokane with no safety net.

In 2014, and again last year, the Spokane Alliance convened two community forums attended by 500 people at which several Spokane City Council members agreed to work with us on a sick-leave policy. Dozens of local businesses joined in, arguing that paid sick leave and paid time off to deal with domestic violence is good for their employees – and good for business. Over 1,000 local people signed supportive cards that we delivered to City Hall last summer.

Our elected City Council members listened – and acted.

They convened a diverse task force of business leaders, health professionals, unions and nonprofits to study the issue. In June, the task force recommended that “all employees should be covered for earned sick and safe leave in Spokane.”

On Jan. 11, the City Council voted 6-1 for an ordinance requiring businesses to offer three to five days of sick leave, depending on business size, for everyone in the city.

Now that Mayor David Condon has vetoed the ordinance as threatened, the council should immediately override.

Seventy-two people signed up to testify on Jan. 11. Supporters of earned sick and safe leave packed the council chamber. The overwhelming majority of those who spoke urged a strong ordinance to protect public health. Many told moving stories.

Adrielle Toussaint recounted having the stomach flu and being told by her now former employer she had to come to work anyway. As she sat weeping on the bathroom floor after being violently sick, her boss told her to get back to serving her retail customers.

School nurse Kira Lewis described kids coming to school with fevers and flu because their parents could not take off work.

After the vote, City Council President Ben Stuckart said he could not imagine not having sick leave while his father lay dying over a year ago and his wife experienced health problems in recent months.

Spokane now joins two dozen other cities – large and small – and four states in having minimum paid sick leave. All faced opposition from a vocal minority, but data show the fears expressed by critics are unfounded.

Local economies with sick-leave laws are equaling or outperforming nearby communities in job and business growth, according to academic and government studies.

During Spokane’s debate over sick leave, it has been easy to forget about the high cost of not guaranteeing sick leave for all: poorer health, children struggling in school, family insecurity and lost consumer spending.

In a recent report, the Spokane Regional Health District said “presenteeism” – coming to work sick – leads to lost productivity, increased workplace accidents and higher turnover, forcing costly hiring and training of new workers.

Business economists have repeatedly found that presenteeism costs American companies more each year than providing sick leave. Those savings explain why most employers have been able to implement new sick-leave policies with minimal impact on business costs.

Spokane’s ordinance is especially well-designed because it covers almost all employers. Germs don’t pay attention to an employer’s size.

Customers of Spokane businesses will be able to rest a little easier next year when the law takes effect, knowing the person serving their salad, caring for a loved one in a nursing home or handling their store purchase isn’t being forced by family finances or employer policy to come in sick.

And the workers themselves? They will have a modest safety net allowing them to cope with illness and domestic violence.

We congratulate the Spokane City Council on its new sick and safe leave policy – a victory for everyone.

Carol Krawczyk is the lead organizer for the Spokane Alliance. Marilyn Watkins is the policy director of the Economic Opportunity Institute, a Seattle-based think tank.

Ted Cruz to working mother: Don’t push it on paid family leave

hanauer quote [Via Civic Skunk Works] Here at Civic Skunk Works, we’ve spent a quite a bit of time pointing out that trickle-down economics has never been anything more than an intimidation tactic masquerading as an economic theory. For decades, politicians (from both parties) and businesses have been employing this tactic in order to scare workers into paralysis. Think about the claims which trickle-down proponents have repeated over and over again:

“If you raise the minimum wage, jobs will be lost.”
“If you tax the wealthy, jobs will be lost.”
“If regulation of the powerful goes up, jobs will be lost.

In short, don’t push it, buddy.

And this Monday, Ted Cruz provided a perfect illustration of this bullying tactic. The Texas senator was asked by a mother of four “what he would do about the current lack of federally mandated paid family leave.” A very good question on a very important subject which affects all working Americans. According to Think Progress, Cruz callously replied:

Giving away free stuff is very easy for politicians to do, but the simplest rule of economics is TANSTAAFL — there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Anything a politician gives you, he must first take from you. And so if you have the federal government mandate paid medical leave,what that ends up doing is driving up the cost of labor for low-income workers.

What he’s saying is: don’t ask for too much or you’ll be priced out of a job. And just in case this mother of four missed the veiled threat, he hammers the point home when he adds, “And by the way, if you get fired or laid off, not only do you not get paid family leave but you don’t get a paycheck either.”

Do you see how slimy this strategy is? Do you see how strong-handed this approach is? Do you see how they are striking fear and doubt into the minds of American workers?

And this isn’t anything new. This is how Republicans and businesses have been framing workplace benefits for a very long time. They’ve perpetually tried to scare the American worker by threatening to cut their jobs if they ever asked for too much. (What they define as “too much” has been ever-changing. Forty years ago occupational health and safety fit under such a category, today it’s paid leave, tomorrow it may be vacation time.) In economically anxious times they know this intimidation tactic often works. Why take a chance and try to push for better benefits if your job is already in the balance?

The truth is paid family leave is actually good for businesses, the worker, and society in general. For businesses specifically paid leave improves worker retention, increases worker productivity, and improves employee loyalty and morale. How do we know this? Well, for one, paid family leave insurance programs “are already working well in California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.” That’s right – paid leave already exists in the three states and none of those state economies has nosedived into economic catastrophe. As Think Progresshighlights:

Evidence from the first two states shows that [paid family leave programs] haven’t hurt employers. About 90 percent of California businesses say that it either had a positive impact or none on profitability, employee performance, and productivity, while it helped reduce turnover, saving them an estimated $89 million each year. Themajority of New Jersey businesses surveyed also said that it hasn’t hurt their finances and some saw a benefit.

The job-killing dystopia which Ted Cruz foreshadowed to the mother of four is simply a trick. Thankfully, we know why politicians like Cruz are continuing to sell this scam to the American worker: because if he can get workers to believe this scary tale, big businesses and their politicians win.